


Love on a wire

by liketheroad



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:55:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketheroad/pseuds/liketheroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whatever life Dom had in America, he’s left it behind as thoroughly as Arthur, and neither of them ever push the other for their life stories.  Arthur likes to think that it’s because he and Dom agree about why everything that came before doesn’t really matter.  That they both know their lives began when they met Eames and Mal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love on a wire

Arthur meets Eames in London when he’s 17. Eames is something like 22 or 23. Even much later, with all his considerable skill, Arthur will never actually be able to find an authentic birth certificate. Or maybe he does, and Eames is just good enough that Arthur dismisses the genuine article along with all his other forgeries.

All Arthur has to his name is the PASIV device he’s stolen from his father and the meager remains of a childhood spent delivering newspapers. Or he has what’s left of it after his plane ticket to the UK, anyway. It isn’t much, but it’s enough to get Arthur through Eames’ door and into the closet Eames had optimistically advertised as a second bedroom.

Arthur is just glad he doesn’t phrase it that way to Eames at the time. Eames finds enough reason to make inappropriate puns without any extra help from Arthur.

\---

Whenever he tells the story of how they met, Eames always says it was the way Arthur’s arse looked in his too-tight jeans that had made him agree to take Arthur on as a lodger, but Arthur remembers the PASIV device being the more enticing part of the bargain, at least at the start.

Eames makes his appreciation of Arthur’s ass known a few weeks into their first stab at shared accommodation, although, in fairness to Eames’ interpretation of those events, he may well have been making his one and only attempt at discretion by holding his already ardent appreciation in for that long.

Not that Arthur objects to said appreciation. In truth, his only objection is that Eames made him wait as long as he did.

\---

Arthur explains to Eames how the PASIV device works, and Eames takes less than a day to tell Arthur how they’re going to use it to get rich.

\---

Arthur’s father began running point for the military’s dreaming sharing project when it was first developed in the late 70s. He oversaw the project through its first successful round of combat training and went on to supervise hundreds of soldiers going through the program.

He expected Arthur, as his only son, to enlist as soon as he was legally able, and to follow as closely in his footsteps as possible, including participating in the dream-sharing program, more advanced and selective than basic training.

Since his mother’s death the year prior, Arthur has found this course of action untenable, but Arthur still likes to think he’s improving on his father’s plan for him, rather than rejecting it entirely.

At the very least, he feels his father has to appreciate Arthur’s ongoing efforts to be all that he can be.

\---

Their first apartment - flat, it’s a _flat, Arthur, do try to acclimatize just a little,_ Eames is forever repeating - is in a terrible building in a terrible part of town and Arthur has never loved a place more, before or since.

They live there for a year, and in that time, Arthur gets a series of firsts

_His first blow-job._

_His first fuck._

_His first successful mind-heist (and then his second, and his third, etcetera)._

_His first gunshot wound._

_His first authentic plate of fish and chips (fed to him by his first lover)._

_His first death in a dream and his first kill in real life._

_His first home that’s his and no one else’s, no one but the only person who actually makes it home._

_\---_

Eames trades up from theft to forgery in their second year. They’ve put London in their rear-view, at least for the time being, and although it’s never discussed, they know they both miss. 

But Paris is lovely in spring, and it isn’t too terrible in the other three seasons either, so they end up staying. They learn to take as few jobs where they live as possible, something about not shitting where you eat that Arthur feels it shouldn’t have taken them a year of living in London and almost dying on a regular basis to figure out, but there’s only so much that can be done about the folly of you. 

But they are a little older now, and perhaps even a little wiser, and so they live in Paris and try to work everywhere but, and Arthur starts sneaking into the back of lecture halls to hear what professors are saying about shared dreaming. Research, he always tells Eames, even though it’s mostly his own fascination that keeps him returning, going far beyond professional development. Still, the information he gleans, _steals_ , Eames likes to correct, is very helpful, and they quickly climb the ranks of their profession, such as it is 

All told, Arthur’s life is going entirely according to plan until the day he has the dubious fortune of sitting next to Mallorie Miles.

He brings her home, which he never does, because there is something dangerously appealing about Mal, something he wants to share with Eames. Eames is pleased by the offering, and they all have quite a good time, and really, that should have been the end of that.

Only it’s not, because Arthur leaves their flat the next day and there Mal is, smoking on their front stoop, shadowed by a scowling man who immediately introduces himself as Mal’s fiance.

Arthur raises one delicate eyebrow in Mal’s direction, but she just laughs.

“I brought him so he could see that I was right,” she says, her voice untroubled, still light from her laughter.

“Right about what?” Arthur asks, although he’s not entirely sure he wants to know. He wishes Eames had taken the trash out instead. Although, come to think of it, no. He’s really doesn’t.

Mal takes a few slinky steps in Arthur’s direction, swaying her hips in a way Arthur is sure has to be intentional, but it’s somehow all the more endearing, knowing it’s an affectation.

“That you were worth it, of course. And I was right, wasn’t I, Dom? Look at how lovely he is.” Quite uninvited, she cups his chin, and pulls Arthur close for a quick, teasing kiss.

Arthur can’t help but put his fingers to his lips, afterwards.

“He is that,” Dom agrees, suddenly as relaxed and confident as Mal, only in a slightly more frumpy, American kind of way. Arthur almost finds himself homesick, just for a second.

“Aren’t you going to invite us up so Dom can get acquainted with lovely Eames as well?” Mal asks Arthur, as though she isn’t already sneaking behind him and through the half-open door into the stairwell leading to their second-story home.

Arthur remembers the noises Mal drew out of Eames the night before, almost as sharply as he remembers the way Eames held onto him afterwards, so tight Arthur was sure he was afraid to let go. He’d like to hear those sounds again, and once they’re through he’d like another opportunity to hold on just as tightly, to make sure Eames knows neither of them is going anywhere.

Besides, Mal is already half-way up the stairs, and Arthur isn’t going to pretend he’s not curious about what this Dom can do that’s good enough for him to be engaged to someone like Mal.

So he smiles, offers a magnanimous hand to Dom, and says, “After you.”

\---

Mal and Dom are students, but with Mal, at least, it’s mostly a formality. Her father is a professor of architecture of both the real and dream varieties, and his work is the reason Arthur met Mal in the first place; it was his lecture he met her in. Miles is a genius, possibly a revolutionary one. He’s also Dom’s mentor.

Whatever life Dom had in America, he’s left it behind as thoroughly as Arthur, and neither of them ever push the other for their life stories. Arthur likes to think that it’s because he and Dom agree about why everything that came before doesn’t really matter. That they both know their lives began when they met Eames and Mal.

\---

Mal likes to go dancing. Dom is terrible, and Arthur refuses, but of course Eames is as infuriatingly good a dancer as he is most other things. He frequently uses his talents for evil, but his evil typically is at least _intended_ to benefit Arthur, so he tries not complain. At least not too sincerely.

But in the spirit of compromise, Arthur and Dom spend countless nights tucked into tiny nightclub booths, watching Eames and Mal spin and spin across dance-floors, looking like the only two people in the world, lost to each other and the perfection of their bodies, moving together like they were built for nothing else. Sometimes, when they dance, Arthur watches their mouths moving, and he knows that they’re singing along to the music, and even though he can’t hear it, he imagines the way their voices would sound together, and it almost makes him want to dance with them.

On one such evening, Eames lifts Mal up in the air, so high that for a moment it looks like she’s about to take flight, only to be pulled back down and into a kiss.

“Should we be jealous?” Arthur asks, his mouth quirking up in a sardonic smile.

Dom huffs a quiet laugh, pulling Arthur’s hand away from his wine glass and kissing his fingers.

“No more than they should be.”

\---

Dom is at least mildly troubled by Eames and Arthur’s criminal activity, but Mal is endlessly amused by it, so he tends to keep his objections quiet. Arthur appreciates this, but he fears a fight is coming. Mal wants to join them, and Eames encourages this desire at every turn, while Arthur is left to distract and dissuade her, hoping he can keep her waiting long enough for Dom to get on board, or at least stop glaring quite so hard whenever it’s suggested.

\---

Eames disappears for the first time after Mal and Dom’s wedding.

The four of them spend the day getting progressively more drunk on expensive champagne, trading kisses and chasing each other across the lawn of Mal’s family estate like children. The ceremony itself is short and lovely, infused with the depth of love Dom and Mal have for each other, the kind that nothing, not even Arthur and Eames’ frequent visits to their bed, can touch. It’s everything Arthur knows to expect from Mal, even though she lives most of her life almost as a dare, a challenge for anyone to take themselves seriously in the face of the absurdity and beauty she sees everywhere.

It’s a perfect day, made perfect by Mal’s beauty and Dom’s happiness, accented by the toast the Eames gives to the bride, when he is his most eloquent, his most charming. It is the first time Arthur knows he loves Eames, but not the first time he’s suspected.

At the end of the night, the four of them share one last round of kisses, deep and serious, nothing like the playful, insignificant exchanges they’ve had before. Mal and Dom are leaving for a month-long honeymoon to the States, and Arthur and Eames are the only ones there to see them off at the airport.

Before they go through security, Mal kisses Arthur one last time and says, “Je’taime, my Arthur,” and then she winks, and Dom is whisking her away by the arm.

A minute later, they’re gone.

Arthur and Eames walk back to their flat, which takes them hours, and they fall asleep without touching, almost as soon as their faces hit their pillows.

Eames is gone when Arthur wakes up, and he doesn’t seem Eames again for almost a year.

\---

Arthur gets unmarked postcards telling him where Eames is, but he assume they’re assurances that he’s alive, a concession to Arthur’s reasonable concern that he might be otherwise, rather than an invitation for Arthur to join him.

He’s not angry, and he chooses to believe the postcards are a testament to that fact that Eames doesn’t expect him to be.

He keeps their flat in Paris, working small jobs by himself and then taking a little more ambitious contract work with an always changing array of extractors and con men. When Mal and Dom come back from their honeymoon, he starts working with them instead.

\---

Arthur moves into the spare bedroom of Mal and Dom’s new house, but he keeps paying rent at his old apartment, just in case Eames decides to come back there.

Dom is still studying with Mal’s father, and he refuses to go into the field with Arthur, or let Mal, but he shares all his expertise, teaching Arthur new tricks as soon as Dom learns or discovers them. Additionally, both Dom and Mal start designing the dreams for Arthur to take his marks into.

It’s a wonderful partnership, and one of the happiest times in Arthur’s life. The three of them don’t sleep together anymore, not now that Dom and Mal married. Or perhaps it’s just because Eames is gone, maybe that’s why it feels wrong. But Arthur still thrives in the spaces Dom and Mal make between them, flourishing in the cracks in their lives only he can sneak through.

Mal teaches him how to cook authentic French cuisine and on warm nights he and Dom play a loose interpretation of badminton in the backyard. They help him plan the jobs they never go on, and they stay up late into the night talking things over, their strategy sessions often devolving into discussions of poetry and philosophy animated by too many bottles of wine. They go on long drives in the convertible Dom bought Mal for a wedding present, top down, wind in their hair.

With Dom’s skill and Mal’s cleverness at his disposal, Arthur is able to complete more and more challenging jobs, bringing home extravagant gifts in lieu of the payments they refuse, the rent they ignore when he tries to pass it to them in discrete envelopes. He buys dresses for Mal, silk and taffeta ballgowns and light, flimsy sundresses that fall off her shoulders so enticingly he sometimes can’t help but sneak a kiss against the rise of her shoulder blades. He buys designer suits Dom constantly mismatches and ruins because he can’t be bothered to pay attention to his clothes, always spilling coffee or staining them with ink from the pens he always carries with him. He brings home fresh flowers that Mal wrinkles her nose at, because she thinks cut flowers as a depressing waste, but she never throws them away, because they both know Dom likes them, some memory of his childhood he won’t share with them, but that they’ve both gotten peeks of in a dream.

At night, when they’re not working, they read together in the room Mal always calls their “parlour,” rolling her “rs” outrageously as she does so. Mal always picks the music, Piaf and Fitzgerald and the Supremes, and sometimes she reads aloud to them, standing on her tiptoes, arms raised dramatically, her voice dancing across the pages, bringing them to life.

When Arthur isn’t working and Dom isn’t busy with the remaining pretenses of his studies, they dream together. Not for work, not for practice, just for the heady pleasure of it. For want of another opportunity to dream up new and impossible worlds they only share with each other.

\---

Mal gets pregnant, and Eames comes back.

The two are not technically related, but they always seem that way to Arthur.

What really happens is that Eames comes back, finds their flat just as he left it, only missing an Arthur, and goes straight to the college to track down Dom, or at least Miles, but he ends up not having to go that far. In fact, as soon as Eames steps foot onto the campus grounds, he is almost immediately intercepted by Mal’s shout, directing his attention to where the three of them are sitting spread on on the grass, a picnic before them, red-checked blanket beneath.

They welcome Eames back with open arms, and mouths, although Arthur’s kiss is saved for last, and best, given the way Eames bites down hard on Arthur’s bottom lip, a possessive reminder Arthur still acknowledges his right to, even after his protracted absence.

Arthur leans up against the oak tree behind him, and Eames’ broad shoulders fit surprisingly well against Arthur’s narrow chest. Mal passes him the bottle of wine they’ve been sharing and Eames presses a wine soaked kiss to Arthur’s cheek after he’s taken a long pull.

“Tell us about your grand adventures,” Mal orders him regally, and Eames complies.

He’s been in India primarily, plenty of country there to get lost in, although he also reports to have spent some time in Japan. He promises that Arthur has a new suit waiting for him when they return home. Arthur has other priorities for that part of their reunion, but he appreciates the thought all the same. After sharing his most outrageous anecdotes, Eames tells them about the jobs he pulled while he was traveling, and for the first time, Arthur feels a pang of jealously.

This is quickly dispelled, however, by the laugh Eames gives him as soon as he feels Arthur tense against him.

“Of course no one was ever as good as Arthur, and that did grow tiring,” he adds, just in case Arthur isn’t mollified enough by the serious, almost worshipful look in Eames’ eyes just before he says this.

“He does set a very high bar,” Dom acknowledges with a tip of the bottle, taking a drink and passing it to Mal.

“And that’s why you came back? Professional dissatisfaction among thieves?” Mal teases, putting the bottle down and angling herself closer against Dom, all the while she’s staring at the way Arthur and Eames are still folded together, holding each other close.

Eames just chuckles, tucking a stray hair behind Arthur’s ear.

“Something like that.”

\---

The next day, Arthur is woken before the sun rises by the persistent ringing of the phone, and when he determines it’s not going to stop, he peels himself off Eames’ chest to answer it.

It’s Dom, and Arthur almost can’t make out his words over Dom’s happiness, but on the third try he actually realizes what Dom is trying to say to him: that Mal is pregnant with a baby girl, and Dom wants to name her Phillipa.

Arthur tells Dom he’s appalled at the choice, but they both know what he really means is _congratulations_.

He hangs up the phone, and Eames is awake, watching him carefully.

“Do you think we’ll have to help them put together the crib?” he asks, sounding genuinely concerned, although that might be for Arthur’s benefit.

Either way, it’s enough to make Arthur smile, to feel the hints of worry, the fear that his life is about to _change_ and there’s nothing he can do about it start to slip away.

There are worse things than being out of control, Eames has taught him that much. What really matters is who you have along with you for the ride.

\----

Mal is even more lovely when she’s pregnant, and Arthur supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. What is surprising is the fiercely protective, yet entirely tender way they all can’t help but act around her. Mal has never been someone Arthur’s envisioned needing protection, and she’s never been one to let someone try to do anything for her she can’t find a way to do herself. Indeed, her independence and composure have always been Arthur’s favorite things about Mal, and he’s confused by how dramatically knowing another living thing is growing inside her changes how he regards her.

The child isn’t dear to him yet, but Mal is, and he can see the anticipation in her eyes every minute, and he finds there’s nothing he’d rather spend his time doing that ensuring the safe delivery of all the promise Mal holds in her eyes, in her body.

It’s the same for Eames, in fact, he’s the most doting of all, even surpassing Dom, who is filled with the same anticipation as Mal, and is sometimes too distracted by this to fully attend to her. All his travels have not rid Eames of his boundless energy, but he channels it better, now, focusing all his attention on the family he once left behind.

They finally abandon their apartment, moving completely into Dom and Mal’s spare room, spreading their things in amongst Dom and Mal’s possessions until no one can quite remember what belongs to whom. They take turns drawing Mal cool baths and fetching her delicious food to distract her from how much she wants a cigarette and a few glasses of wine.

Eames is the first one to feel the baby kick against her stomach, and Arthur is the one who is there when her water breaks. All three of them pace the length of her hospital room for hours while she screams and is instructed to breathe, and she holds onto Dom with one hand and Arthur and Eames’ clasped hands with the other during the final pushes, her nails digging into their skin hard enough to bleed, to scar.

They are all there together to welcome Phillipa Cobb into the world, and when Mal holds her, smiling up at them, Arthur almost wishes it was a dream. If only so that he could return to this moment over and over, to live forever in the feeling he has now, standing among them, looking down at the new life Dom and Mal have created.

\---

Dom and Mal stop “consulting” for Arthur and Eames after Phillipa, and the spare room is turned into a nursery, although Phillipa sleeps in bed with her parents for most of the first year of her life.

Eames and Arthur start sharing Dom and Mal’s bed, sleeping in rotating shifts. They don’t have much need of their own bed now that they’re almost always up half of the night taking turns rocking a crying baby.

They all live with dark circles under their eyes that first year, and Arthur and Eames live mostly off their savings, uninterested in performing anything but the most simple, low-risk jobs.

Dom is teaching at the college, but only one course, so he’s home a lot, and Arthur and Eames are there when he can’t be. Mal stays home with Phillipa, although she still draws mazes for hours, building rooms and then entire cities in her mind.

Sometimes when Arthur is alone with Dom, or Mal, he feels the old frissons of desire he supposes he will always associate with them, but it’s buried under years of quiet domesticity and love, and he never acts on it.

\---

A few weeks after Phillipa’s second birthday, Mal announces she’s pregnant again, and they leave Phillipa with her grandparents to take Mal and Dom out to celebrate.

They go dancing, because Mal says it might be the last time she has the chance in awhile, and because none of them can ever say no to her.

She and Eames dance, as always, and Dom and Arthur watch with fond, proud smiles on their faces, knowing that the most beautiful things in the room belong to them.

\---

When they walk together down the street, Dom walks behind Mal, his arms looped around her swelling waist. It should be awkward, should slow their steps and make them stumble, break apart, but as they move their bodies are always perfectly in tune, and they never miss a step.

Arthur and Eames trail behind them, watching for threats they hope Mal and Dom never have to imagine, their hands hanging loosely from their sides, fingers always ready to reach for their guns.

\---

Before Mal gives birth for the second time, Eames leaves again.

This time he tells Arthur first, but he doesn’t extend an invitation and Arthur does his best to be grateful to Eames for not asking him to choose. He needs to stay with Dom and Mal, needs to help with Phillipa, help with the new baby still on its way.

Eames says goodbye with a bruising kiss, and promises to send lots of postcards.

\---

Arthur and Dom start sleeping together, because Mal tells them to. Her hormones are through the roof, but she’s too exhausted, she says, to be good company for either of them, her second pregnancy proving more difficult, physically and emotionally, than the first. And Arthur is missing Eames more, this time. Eames’ absence hollows out Arthur’s chest, making him silent for days at a time.

Mal says they need each other, and maybe she’s right, because Arthur starts sleeping better after he abandons his own bed to spend his nights sandwiched between Dom and Mal, even on the nights he and Dom haven’t slowly unwound each other with soft kisses and almost shy, careful touches. Mal is always there with them, in bed, or near it, but she never touches them until they’re through. Sometimes, after, Dom will go down on her for what feels like hours, as Arthur just lies beside them and watches, Mal’s right hand buried in Dom’s hair, her left clutching onto Arthur’s wrist, holding him down. Afterwords, she always curls around the other side of Arthur, so he’s caught between Dom and Mal, who reach across his chest to hold hands.

These times with Dom and Mal are nothing like the frenzied intensity Arthur has known with Eames, or even the sly, playful sex the four of them have shared over the years. But Dom is always so far away, these days, lost to his research, dreaming for hours, and Arthur finds great comfort in the moments when the hot press of his mouth against Dom’s skin is enough to snap him to attention, to remind Dom he’s awake, and that Mal and Arthur are still there, waiting for him.

\---

Arthur gets an overseas collect call that turns out to be from Eames.

Evidently he’s in drunk. And in Mexico.

He’s been gone for six months.

Arthur can’t make out more than every other word, but he grasps enough to be at the airport to pick Eames up when he arrives at Charles de Gaulle two days later.

Eames is tan, but thin, and Arthur shoulders his bags for him without either of them discussing it. He drives them straight to Mal and Dom’s; he can’t stop thinking of the new house that way, even though he’s lived in it since they bought it, even though he helped them pick it out.

He and Eames don’t speak on the ride home, but once they arrive, Eames stops him from leaving by putting a hand over Arthur’s as he reaches for the door handle.

“How are they?” he asks, his voice heavy, made to sound louder than it really is by the long silence proceeding it.

Arthur treats this question with the seriousness Eames’ tone warrants, glad for the reminder Eames cares, not just about him, but about all of them.

“Mal is worried about the baby, and the rest of us are worried about her. Dom has a new government grant to go along with his new obsession.”

Eames raises an eyebrow, and Arthur elaborates.

“He’s trying to sustain multiple dreamscapes within one another. He’s been working with a chemist who’s helping him figure out how to stabilize more than two layers. They’re making a lot of progress.”

“You don’t approve,” Eames notes.

Arthur sighs. “He’s testing the new mix compounds on himself, and I think the only reason Mal isn’t trying them with him is that she’s worried it would hurt the baby, which is smaller comfort than I’d like.”

Eames nods in troubled agreement, and then motions for Arthur to continue.

“Phillipa is still confused by the idea that she’s going to have a little brother.” He looks over at Eames and adds, not unkindly, “She asks about you a lot.”

Eames smiles, and the sadness at the edges of that smile are the first real emotions Arthur has seen on his face since Eames arrived.

“And you?”

Arthur shrugs. “You know me.”

Eames’ smile grows sadder still, and he nods again. “Same old Arthur, still looking after everyone but yourself.”

Arthur shakes his head. “It’s my choice to take care of them, and I hardly do it for unselfish reasons.”

Eames seems to ignore this, until he says, his hand still covering Arthur’s, knees pressed together as they hunch together in the car, “And when you _did_ stop to think of yourself, did you ever think of me as well?”

Arthur turns his hand over and laces his fingers together with Eames’ as he answers, voice emotionless in his honesty, “I thought of you every day.”

\---

Eames’ luggage turns out to be filled with presents, although Arthur thinks the abandonment of his entire prior wardrobe is Eames’ best present of all.

\---

“Are you alright?” Dom asks him, having cornered Arthur in the kitchen while they’re supposed to be bringing out the meal Mal has prepared for Eames’ first night back with them.

Arthur touches Dom’s wrist, a silent reassurance, and nods. “I’m glad he’s back.”

Dom eyes him cagily. “How long do you think he’ll stay, this time?”

Arthur suppresses a sigh, wishing for the hundredth time that Dom could understand that not everyone could be like him and Mal, not even people who were just as much in love.

“He goes because there are parts of life I can’t give him, not when I’m here. This,” Arthur gestures expansively across the kitchen, the life it represents, “isn’t what either of us expected. When we met, we thought we were going to take over the world together, and for awhile, it seemed like we really would. But I’ve made different choices, and while I don’t regret them, I can’t begrudge Eames the freedom I’ve been glad to do without.”

“How long is that going to be enough for you, Arthur? How long until he stops leaving us to pick up the pieces?”

Arthur smiles, a little sad, a little sly, and says, “You don’t seem to mind, so much.”

Dom reaches out involuntarily, and Arthur meets him halfway, their foreheads pressing together for just an instant before they withdraw.

“I don’t like to see you unhappy, that’s all.”

Arthur smiles again, and says, “I’m not unhappy now. Let that be enough.”

\---

Eames isn’t angry when Arthur explains that he’s been sleeping with Dom and Mal. He isn’t even surprised, and Arthur supposes there’s no reason he should be.

After putting Phillipa to bed, the four of them stand together in the master bedroom, Mal tucked under Eames’ arm and Dom and Arthur standing side by side, their hands touching, but not quite attached.

Eames contemplates the bed skeptically, and then proclaims that they’re going to need a bigger one.

Mal laughs, and Arthur smiles hopefully when Dom is the first to agree.

\---

It takes only a few minor adjustments in the following weeks for it to appear as though Eames has never even been gone. A new bed, an extra place setting at the table, additions to the grocery list to accommodate Eames’ love of fish and his hatred of spinach.

On nights when Mal is too hot from the baby growing inside of her, she sleeps alone in the guest room and Arthur, Eames and Dom lie like sardines in a row. Other nights Dom sleeps on the floor in the guestroom so he can be nearer to Mal, and Arthur and Eames sleep alone together in the master bedroom. Arthur always thinks those nights should feel lonely, two instead of four, but he could never be lonely when he’s with Eames.

In the daytime, their lives are thoroughly domestic. Eames doesn’t bring up the possibility of work, and Arthur has been out of the game so long he’s almost sure he’s forgotten how to play. His head is filled with other information now, with the stories he tells Phillipa at night, the exact way she likes to be pushed on her tire swing in the back yard, the best quality brand of dish detergent and the nutritional merits of different brands of yogurt.

Eames doesn’t tease him for knowing these things, or for caring about them. He doesn’t accuse Arthur of getting soft. Instead, he makes himself Arthur’s apprentice, returning to his place in their household with ease that would be surprising on anyone other than Eames. It helps that Phillipa is dizzy with excitement to have Eames back, even letting herself be distracted from her obvious but unarticulated concerns about the loss of her parents’ full attention upon the arrival of a new child in the household by the additional doting she receives from Eames.

If Arthur thought Eames’ absence required his forgiveness, it would have been amply earned through the way Eames cheerfully spends his days looking after Phillipa while Dom works and Arthur tries to bully and cajole Mal into resting.

With Eames around to entertain Phillipa as well as the rest of them, Mal’s mood improves greatly and Arthur starts to breathe almost normally again, watching the color return to her cheeks, the teasing spark he loves coming back into her eyes.

Dom even starts keeping better hours, or ones that make Arthur a little worry less, at any rate. It might not be because of Eames’ return, or at least not because Dom’s glad for it, but Arthur is grateful regardless.

\---

Eames is excellent at many things. Badminton, for whatever reason, happens to be one of them. It’s something he’s good at but dislikes intensely, which Arthur supposes is a luxury of the staggeringly multi-talented.

Before Eames’ return, badminton was a game Arthur and Dom played half-jokingly together in the backyard, passing the birdie back and forth lazily, nothing more than the barest hints of competition between them. Phillipa, young as she was, and Mal, had no interest, but they were always a good audience, counting the number of volleys Dom and Arthur could perform in a row and cheering when they broke an old record.

Now, with Eames back, Dom suggests matches with Arthur like he’s proving a point, even though Arthur’s not quite sure what that point would be. Neither of them are very good at badminton, after all, and Arthur always plays better when he’s playing with Eames.

Maybe it’s just the expression Eames gets whenever Arthur agrees that always makes Dom grin so triumphantly. The way he watches them from the sidelines, arms folded across his chest, his eyes betraying wistfulness and maybe something else, as though he wants Arthur back at his side but is refusing to say so.

Every time Arthur agrees to another match with Dom, he hopes it will be the time Eames asks him not to.

\---

Mal’s water breaks, and Dom has a breakthrough. He misses the birth, too deeply sedated to be woken before the proscribed time, so they take her to the hospital without him. When her son is handed to her, Mal smiles down at him and whispers conspiratorially, “Because he is not here to protest, we shall call you James, and your father can wait a few years before he gets his _Finnegan_.”

Eames applauds the decision, but Arthur stays studiously silent, wishing Dom was there, wishing that he hadn’t missed this, wishing he could ignore the tension between Eames and Dom, wishing that the four of them could fit together as they once had, before one of them always seemed to be missing.

\---

Things are better once James is born, at least on the surface. Dom puts his research on hold, appalled at himself for missing his son’s birth, for failing Mal in that way. She forgives him as she will forgive Dom everything, because she can do nothing else, because he would forgive her just the same.

Eames and Dom deal with each other mostly through avoidance, and Arthur and Mal acquiesce to this by allowing themselves to be pulled into opposite corners of the house to be with them. Arthur and Eames start sleeping in their own bed again, and so do Mal and Dom, at first because they need room for the baby, and then simply because they are all used to sleeping in two’s once again.

Arthur misses his time with only Mal and Dom, but he doesn’t dwell on it, knowing that he could never be to them what they are to each other, knowing they could never be what Eames is to him.

\---

Phillipa is set to enroll in preschool that fall, and when Dom is too busy, Arthur goes with Mal to interview at all the prestigious schools she has her sights set on.

When the headmasters and headmistresses refer to him as Mal’s husband, neither he nor Mal ever correct them.

\---

Eames and Dom get into a heated argument that ends with them both leaving the house in opposite directions. Ostensibly they’re fighting about the ethics of in-dream forgery, but even that thin pretence dissolves about halfway in, and once they’re gone, Arthur is left feeling distinctly like a toy two children have just forgotten about in the midst of fighting each other over it.

Mal is still there with him, at least, and she winds herself around him comfortingly, massaging his shoulders and kissing his cheek.

“They will be alright,” she assures him, sounding like she believes it. “It is not that they don’t care for each other as we do, they simply do not understand each other. They each think the other is selfish, when really they are both doing the best they can. But we know that, don’t we? So that makes it alright.”

Arthur shifts out of her arms so that his back isn’t towards her, sharing an uncertain smile, wondering what it would be like to have her optimism.

\---

The real trouble starts once Mal is done breastfeeding James. Phillipa is just shy of her fifth birthday, but to Arthur she always seems so much older, almost like a proper person inside her tiny body, the one that instills so much protective energy in all of them. James has none of his elder sister’s seriousness, but then again, he’s only one and a half. But regardless, he’s a happy, uncomplicated kind of baby, not like Phillipa was, even then, and she’s the only other baby Arthur can compare him too.

The problem with James, then, is that he quite quickly gives the impression of not needing much looking after, always entertaining himself with blocks and books he can’t read but seems content to flip through for hours. With James so pleasantly disposed to everything around him and Phillipa so independent, quiet and reserved beyond her years, the children seem to blend into the background of their lives, demanding little. Arthur spares enough attention to them to be worried he doesn’t pay attention enough, but his hands are full trying to keep Dom and Eames from being at each other’s throats, trying to keep Dom from disappearing into dreams and from his renewed attempts to take Mal under with him. It’s a harder battle everyday, the older James and Phillipa get.

Eames’ attempts to help only make Dom more persistent, making him hold onto Mal tighter, and Arthur doesn’t know how long he will be able to keep them from getting lost in a world he and Eames can’t follow them into.

\---

It happens sooner than Arthur feared.

They are barely past James’ second birthday when Arthur comes home from the store and finds Eames gone and Mal and Dom asleep on the living room floor.

Phillipa is at school and James is innocently cuddling against his parents dreaming forms. He holds his arms up to Arthur as soon as he sees him, and Arthur picks James up with one arm while he checks the leads in Dom and Mal’s wrists with the other.

Cursing under his breath, Arthur deposits James on the couch, pressing a distracted kiss to his forehead and then investigating the scene further, looking at the readings on the PASIV Dom and Mal are both connected to with growing concern.

He tries to wake them, but they are too heavily sedated, unresponsive to blaring headphones against their ears and even the kick he manufactures by propping them in chairs and tipping them backwards.

After a half-dozen more unproductive attempts, James starts to cry, and so Arthur positions Dom and Mal back on the floor where he found them, picking James back up and rocking him back and forth to a half-remembered song Mal taught him long ago in a dream.

By the time the sun has gone down and Eames has returned from wherever he spent the day, Dom and Mal are still sleeping. Eames doesn’t say anything, he just joins Arthur and the children on the couch, pulling Phillipa onto his lap and putting his arm around Arthur’s shoulders.

The children fall asleep in their laps, and night turns into morning, but still Dom and Mal do not wake.

\---

A week passes before Dom and Mal wake up; Arthur thinks it’s the longest week in his life. That is, at least, until the weeks that follow.

\---

Dom and Mal barely recognize him, for the first few days, and at first they outright ignore Eames. They look at their children, but never touch them.

Dom seems to remember a little more than Mal, at least Arthur hopes it’s recognition he sees in Dom’s eyes when he looks back at Arthur, or at his children. He explains to them where they’ve been in garbled pieces, and he walks like an old man riddled with arthritis for the first month after they wake.

Mal is silent, as foreign to them as they are to her. Dom is the only one she trusts, the only one she speaks to as though he’s anything close to real.

From the fights she and Dom have all around them, Arthur pieces together enough to know that Mal believes she’s still dreaming, believes that they need to kill themselves so that she and Dom can get back to wherever they were, lost in their subconscious, deeper than Arthur has ever even thought to go.

Arthur spends those first weeks having hushed conversations with Dom in dark corners of the house and picking up James and Phillipa and carrying them out of the rooms Mal is so frequently screaming at Dom in. The more Dom starts to believe they’re awake, the more of the dream he forgets, the more frantic and withdrawn Mal gets.

Whenever Eames tries to speak to her, to touch her shoulder or pull her into a dance, she yells at him, calls for Dom and locks herself away in their bedroom for hours at a time. Arthur almost wishes Eames would stop trying, but he can’t be the one to suggest they give up, even as he’s almost certain they’ve already lost.

\---

Eames starts working again, taking jobs that he can finish as quickly as possible, sometimes stealing tangible things instead of ideas, claiming they’re often easier to get to. Arthur stops protesting after Eames points out that _somebody_ has to be bringing in money. Dom is in no condition to go into the university, Miles is covering for him as best as he can, but there might not even be a job waiting for him when he’s ready to go back to it. If he’s ever ready. Mal can’t be convinced her children are real enough to try and care for them, and Arthur has his hands full trying to keep the knives out of Mal’s reach without having them end up in his gut.

She still ignores Eames unless he approaches her, but she’s started to circle Arthur sometimes, eyeing him like a roadblock she’s figuring out how to dismantle. He knows she thinks he’s a projection, and he knows that she thinks he’s standing between Dom leaving with her.

\---

“It’s my fault.” Dom has said this before, but never quite like this. Never sounding quite so serious, so honest.

“You have my vote,” Eames agrees shortly, pacing the length of the living room. With every lap he walks a little faster.

Arthur is sitting at the dining room table with Dom, trying to make Dom look at him.

“Neither of you had any business sedating yourselves so heavily, but you didn’t know what it would do to you, didn’t know how long you’d be stuck down there.”

“I meant _now_ , Arthur. It’s my fault that she doesn’t believe this is real. She thinks that because I made her believe it. Because I put the idea in her mind and now I’m not sure anything we do will get it out.”

Arthur has no idea what to say, stunned and confused, but Eames’ reply is startlingly prompt, and terrifyingly calm in its fury.

“You’re talking about inception. Jesus Christ, Dom.”

Dom is past exhaustion, his face haggard and his eyes huge in hollow, bruised sockets. Arthur can’t help but reach out across the table and take Dom’s hands in his. Eames makes a disgusted noise at this, stopping his pacing and for a moment, looking as though he’s seriously considering leaving the room entirely.

“What the bloody hell were you thinking?” he demands of Dom instead.

“We were lost down there.” Dom defends himself weakly, sounding unsure as to whether he even believes himself as he adds, “there was nothing else I could do. We had to wake up, and for her to come with me, she had to understand why. I couldn’t make her trust me until she stopped trusting the world around us.”

“How did you do it?” Eames presses, looming over Dom’s shoulder now, their faces inches apart.

“Her totem,” Dom explains wearily. “She locked it away, forgot about the truth it offered.” He shrugs. “So I reminded her. I found where she had hidden her totem and I set it spinning again. It took months for her to go back for it, to check, but when she did, it was already there, waiting for her.”

“That’s brilliant,” Arthur says softly.

“It’s homicidal, is what it is. Did you not think about what would happen after you woke up?” Eames rails, stalking away from the table again, as though he can’t trust himself to be quite that near to Dom.

“I thought she would forget - like we _always_ forget, once we wake up. It was supposed to fade along with the rest of the dream!”

Eames ignores him, except for the way his hands curl into fists at his sides. Dom stands up, and it’s hard to say who is the most surprised when he walks right over to Eames and puts his hands on Eames’ face.

“Don’t you see, I had to get her to come back with me. Back to our children, back to Arthur, back to _you_.”

Immediately after he says this, Dom presses a kiss against Eames’ lips, hard and fast, but he withdraws before Eames can react, and so Arthur can’t be sure whether or not Eames would have kissed him back.

\---

Mal drops herself off of a 17 story hotel window, and Eames and Arthur holding him back are the only things that keep Dom from jumping down after her.

\---

Dom is wanted for his wife’s suspected murder.

Eames is at least half-ready to turn him in.

James and Phillipa want to know where their mother is, and why Arthur always looks like he’s been crying.

He doesn’t know how to explain to them that it’s because he spends all his time trying not to.

\---

Dom has to run, this isn’t up for debate.

The conflict is centered on whether or not the rest of them should run with him. Eames is (vocally) of the opinion that the children need to be left with their grandparents, maintaining that a life on the run is no place for children.

“We will find a way to get back to them, but for now we have got to get away and as long as Dom is with us there will be nowhere safe enough for the children!”

They don’t really have time to be arguing like this, but they can’t seem to do anything else, either.

Dom is unresponsive, staring out the kitchen window as James and Phillipa play in the backyard.

This leaves Arthur to reply, yet again, “We can’t just leave them here. They need their father, they need _us_.”

Eames wrings his hands, a habit he picked up from one of his forgeries that has carried into his waking life.

“Arthur, I beg of you, please see sense. Their father is about to become a fugitive and you and I are _already_ wanted criminals. It’s hardly what happy childhoods are made of.”

Intellectually, Arthur agrees, but he also knows that James and Phillipa are the only things holding Dom to reality. Since Mal’s death, Dom has become a shade, a shadow of his former self, stranger even than the man who awoke on his living room floor after living a full life in a dream.

Arthur is trying to learn this new Dom while keeping him safe and sane all at once, and he knows it’s a selfish, possibly an unforgivable risk, but he needs all the help he can get. He needs the children who remind Dom what he has to stay awake for. He needs the parts of Mal that are still alive in their faces, needs to care for them the way she can’t anymore.

So he shakes his head, closing the argument in a way he hasn’t before when he says, softly, “No. We’re not leaving them. This family has lost enough.”

\---

Eames leaves for the third time the night of Mal’s funeral.

It’s the first time he asks Arthur to go with him.

When Arthur says no, neither of them is surprised.

\---

Eames forges false identities for all four of them, a parting gift that makes Arthur’s chest ache, turning something as simple as breathing into a sharply painful ordeal.

He ignores this as well as he can, trying to focus on Dom, on their children.

They make use of every back channel transport Eames can arrange for them, and it’s only because of him that they eventually make it to Buenos Aries and the discrete house Eames has purchased for them under Arthur’s assumed name.

Arthur eventually gives up trying to explain to Dom that Eames has make every step of their flight possible after he realizes Dom needs to hold onto the idea that it is just the two of them now, against the world. Until Arthur realizes Dom is only able to stay with Arthur because he believes they’ve both lost what really made their lives worth living.

\---

It takes a few months for Arthur to trust Dom with James and Phillipa alone, not that he was ever afraid Dom would hurt them, or even forget about them. Maybe it’s more than Arthur didn’t trust Dom with himself.

At any rate, at the beginning of their fifth month in Brazil, Arthur starts making discrete inquiries into the world of extraction he thought he had so thoroughly left behind. He’s afraid he’ll be rusty, so he plans to take himself into a few practice dreams to regain his footing, but finds after only the second dream that neither his body nor his mind have forgotten any of the requisite skills. Evidently it’s hard for the mind to forget the feelings of power and control that come with the ability to create the impossible.

He won’t let Dom join him in dreams, or go out into the field; someone has to stay home with James and Phillipa, and he’s not going to let Dom risk being seen. But he takes all the advice Dom can give him, absorbing the wealth of knowledge accumulated from over 50 years spent lost to a world that was real enough for Mal to kill herself to try and get back to.

\---

Somewhere into the first year after Mal’s death, Arthur and Dom start sleeping together again. Not sex, just sharing the same bed, exchanging the occasional chaste kiss before they try and go to sleep. It’s a comfort they both require, but like so many things, now, it’s a shadow of what they once had, a sometimes sharply painful reminder of what they’ve both lost, even as they try to fit together, to pretend for each other that they are something neither of them can ever be.

Sharing a bed helps them sleep, even if it doesn’t help much with the loneliness that pervades their waking hours. Without the help of the PASIV, Dom is lucky to get an hour or two a night, but Arthur tries to limit Dom’s reliance on the machine as much as possible, knowing Dom will never fully return to any of them if he keeps trying to bring Mal back to life in his dreams.

\---

Eames still sends postcards, and Arthur files the new ones along with the rest. His system consists of a series of shoe boxes he keeps under his bed, but they’re all ordered chronologically and subdivided according to continent, so he thinks he still deserves credit for the effort.

Eames hasn’t strayed far from Mombasa in the entire time he’s been away, but the sums he wires anonymously to Arthur’s offshore accounts are large enough that Arthur can’t decide if Eames stays because it’s a good place for him to make his living, or simply because he likes it there.

\---

Arthur lets himself into the darkened house, walking as quietly as possible, not wanting to disturb what he hopes are sleeping children upstairs. These efforts are threatened when he nearly trips over a toy train left abandoned in the middle of the front hall, but Arthur has kept his balance through worse, and he rights himself with minimal fanfare, picking up the train and putting it on the chest stuffed with broken toys and shoes and winter wear the children never need because they’re living in the tropics.

He hangs his suit jacket on the front banister and has his waistcoat half-way unbuttoned by the time he steps into the living room. The room is lit by the street lamps shining through the half-drawn drapes, and Dom is perched on the edge of the couch, his back to the window. His back is hunched, straining towards the coffee table in front of him. He has a gun in one hand, and Mal’s totem in the other.

Wordlessly, Arthur crosses the room and slides between Dom and the back of the couch, wrapping his left arm around Dom’s waist and taking Dom’s gun from him with his free hand.

Dom barely seems to notice he’s there.

Arthur kisses his neck anyway, a silent hello, and then asks, “Did you get the kids down?”

He hasn’t been home in three weeks; the Cobol job took longer than expected, but at least it was a success. Arthur’d had his doubts about extracting from someone like Saito, but the second level Nash designed had been enough to satisfy Saito and Cobol.

Dom doesn’t answer him, but his hand closes tightly around the silver top, and Arthur can feel Dom inhaling deeply against his chest. Eventually, Dom seems to accept that he’s awake, his body going loose in Arthur’s arms, resting his head against Arthur’s collarbone.

“How did it go?” Dom asks, referring to Arthur’s contract with Cobol.

“Good. We got what we needed, got out clean.” Arthur’s hand itches to take Mal’s totem away like he took away Dom’s gun, but he’s tried that before, and he knows better, at least for now.

Instead, he asks again, “The kids? They asleep?” It’s the middle of the night, but Arthur has come home later than this and found Dom keeping a silent vigil while his children run wild around him, as sleepless as he has become.

But Dom nods, and Arthur can feel his exhaustion in every movement. He suppresses a self-critical sigh. He knows better than to leave Dom alone this long, but the job had been an important one, paying well both in money and contacts, and he’d needed to see it through.

Arthur eases them forward on the couch, gently shifting Dom along with him until they’re on their feet, and he nods in the direction of the stairs.

“Come on, I’m beat.” It’s even true; jet-lag back from Kyoto is a bitch.

Dom shakes his head, protesting like he always does at the thought of unaided sleep, but Arthur plays dirty, smiling hopefully and says, “Keep me company?”

There are many things Dom has taken from him, but even more he still can’t bear to deny Arthur, so he nods, looking grave even as he tries to smile back.

They climb the stairs silently, and ready for bed the same way.

They slide into bed, and as always, it seems too small, room enough for the two of them, but not nearly enough room for the four Arthur still always expects them to be. But it’s been almost two years, and they’ve learned to make do.

Arthur sleeps on his side, now, instead of on his back like when Mal was there to curl to one side and Dom to the other, or on his stomach, like when Eames was there to rest his head against, his heart beat lulling Arthur to sleep. He tries not to think about the times all four of them fell asleep, limbs tangled together so that it was almost impossible to know where he began and the other’s ended. Now it is only he and Dom, and they sleep spooned together, Arthur’s knees tucked in against Dom’s, Dom’s fingers curled around Arthur’s wrist.

As they lie together in the dark, Arthur closes his eyes and waits for sleep, hoping Dom will be able to do the same.

\---

Two weeks after finishing the Cobol job, Saito shows up in the cafe where Arthur is having breakfast.

Arthur reaches for his gun, but something in Saito’s eyes stops him from drawing it. He motions for Saito to sit down beside him instead.

“Hello again, Arthur,” Saito says, and Arthur has to admit he’s probably earned the smugness in his tone.

“Mr. Saito, hello. What can I do for you?”

Saito smiles, and Arthur realizes this is either about to get very good, or very bad. Possibly a little bit of both.

\---

“Arthur, we can’t do this.”

“Yes we can. We _know_ we can.”

“Are you listening to yourself? Yes, we know. But we also know what happens _after_ an inception. We know what it can do to a person. No one should have that kind of power over someone else, no one should be able to infect another mind like that. Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it should be done.”

“It’s not the same kind of idea,” Arthur protests, “it won’t have the same effects.”

“You don’t know that! You can’t know _what_ the effects will be, that’s the whole point!” Dom shouts, going from pleading to panicked.

Arthur crosses the room to pull Dom close, kissing his forehead and then pressing his against Dom’s. “We can do this. We can make this and then you can be free. We won’t have to hide anymore, won’t have to run.”

“Arthur, I want that more than anything but--”

“Please,” Arthur whispers, not recognizing his own voice. “Please just say you’ll help me try.”

Dom closes his eyes, pulling in a long, steadying breath, and then he says, “Alright, Arthur. We’ll try.”

\---

Saito flies them out of Brazil in a private jet, and James and Phillipa are reunited with their grandparents in Paris, to be left with them for the duration. Dom doesn’t like this part of the plan in the least, and Arthur has to agree, but he keeps promising both of them the risks will be worth it.

Meeting up with Miles has additional advantages, which helps smooth over Dom’s protests. He introduces them to Ariadne, and within the first trial, Arthur realizes she’s going to be the best architect he’s ever seen, even better than Dom. He keeps Dom out of her training dreams, too much experience trying to share dreams with Dom and finding Mal’s projection keeping him wary. They are trying to entice Ariadne, after all, not frighten her away.

He knows they’ll have to bring Dom in eventually, only he has the kind of experience going as deeply as they’ll need, but for as long as Arthur can, he’s going to keep Dom awake.

\---

Nearly two weeks into their preparations, Dom says, “If we’re going to perform inception, we’re going to need a forger.”

Arthur nods tightly. “We’re going to need Eames.”

He supposes he should count it as a victory when Dom says, “We always have.”

\---

Arthur finds Eames in a quintessentially shady bar, one doing poor attempt at looking like its there for anything but the poker tables that dominate the space.

He steps behind Eames, for a minute flattering himself by thinking he’s snuck up on the other man, but then Eames turns, and he looks up at Arthur like he’s been there all along, watching Eames lose at poker for hours instead of minutes.

Arthur had hoped for something more eloquent to punctuate this moment, but he finds himself opting for simplicity, saying, “Hello,” as softly as his voice allows.

Eames rises from the table, smiling wide but not quite sincerely and clapping Arthur on the shoulder.

“Hello, Arthur. D’you finally miss me?”

\---

“Why Mombasa?”

They’re sitting across from each other in the bar, not touching their drinks or looking at each other. A few minutes prior, Arthur got about half-way into his explanation of what Saito wants to hire them to do before Eames’ pinched expression caused Arthur to lapse into silence.

Eames shrugs. “I like the heat.”

Arthur, who has been waiting two years for an answer - some kind of real explanation, not as to why Eames has felt compelled to pick up his life and continue it elsewhere time and time again, but why this need couldn’t be abandoned, not even after everything they’ve lost, not even after Mal - is less than impressed by this logic.

“The _heat_?” he parrots angrily. “You left us - left _me_ \- and then stayed gone for _two years_ because you like the heat?” Any other time, he would chide himself for being so literal, but he can’t help himself right now. He’d almost forgotten what being in such close proximity to Eames could do to him.

Eames makes a tight, wincing smile and says, “Well, I suppose there was also the hope that if I stayed away long enough _you’d_ be the one to come back to me, for once, darling.”

Arthur hates the way Eames says “darling,” now. Like he knows Arthur is still his to claim as such, but as if he almost wishes Arthur wasn’t.

When Arthur doesn’t respond, Eames continues, his voice finally raising slightly in anger. “I know you like to pretend otherwise, but the postcards _were_ always meant to be an invitation, Arthur. I know full well you can find me without the help of a stupid piece of paper, that’s not the a reason I kept sending you the sodding things practically every week even though I haven’t left the same shit flat in Mombasa almost this entire time.”

Arthur’s eyes dart back and forth, up to Eames face and away, back and then away again. He can’t decide if what he’s feeling is anger or guilt. Maybe it’s a lot of both.

Eames voice is softer when he says, “I waited here for you for two years and all that time you never came. And now, when you finally have, it’s for _Dom_.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Arthur snaps, automatically playing his part of an old argument.

“No? Then whose fault was it?” Eames asks tiredly, doing the same.

Arthur shakes his head, jaw clenching. “He had no choice, he had to get her to wake up, if he hadn’t planted the idea in her mind, she would have been lost anyway, lost to limbo until her mind was gone, even if she did ever wake up on her own. He did the only thing he could, took the risk he had to without any way of knowing what would happen to her. He couldn’t have known.”

Eames is unmoved by these arguments, as he always has been. But this time, he adds, “And as for whose idea it was to go so deep in the first place?”

“Don’t do that,” Arthur responds harshly. “Mal made her own choice, she always did. Don’t insult her memory by implying otherwise.”

After a tense silence, Eames seems to concede this point, even tipping his hand a little in Arthur’s direction.

Arthur clears his throat. “Look, about the job - performing inception - I know it can be done but I don’t think we can do it without--”

“What is it, Arthur?” Eames interrupts, his voice thoughtful and far away, as though he was lost deep in thought, not even listening to Arthur speak. “I know it’s not that you love them more than me. So what makes them to impossible to leave and me so easy to let go?”

Arthur turns his face angrily towards Eames’, leaning in closer as he hisses, “You left. That was always your choice and staying was mine - just like always welcoming you back has always been my choice. But not this time. This time Mal was dead and Dom was _gone_ and I didn’t have any choice at all.”

Eames reaches out, but Arthur jerks away before Eames’ hand can touch his shoulder.

“Dom was lost. Lost without Mal, from limbo - just lost. He became a different person - an old man who barely remembered me, barely believed I was real, that any of us were real, even his own children. That’s what you left me with. That’s all James and Phillipa had left for a father and I _couldn’t_ leave them too.”

“Why must you always assume I was asking you to?”

Arthur stares at Eames, finally given pause, hearing something he hasn’t heard before.

“What else am I supposed to think?”

Eames sighs. “Perhaps that I wasn’t really asking you to leave with me. Perhaps I was simply hoping you’d eventually ask me to stay.”

Arthur shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have had to ask. We needed you - _I_ needed you.”

Eames sighs again, heavier this time. “I know.”

Arthur looks at him, and he wonders if it’s forgiveness he’s seeing in Eames’ eyes, if that’s what Eames is seeing in Arthur’s own.

This second time, when Eames reaches out, Arthur leans into Eames’ touch instead of pulling away from it. He know the kiss Eames presses to Arthur’s left temple is as close to an apology as he’s going to get. Arthur doesn’t say anything either, but he hopes Eames knows Arthur is sorry too.

\---

He and Eames fly back to Paris in another one of Saito’s planes. It’s empty except for the two them and the chemist Eames has convinced Arthur to hire on. Arthur is starting to suspect Saito owns his own airline instead of just his own jet.

They discuss the logistics of the job on the flight, and Arthur rests his head against Eames’ shoulder as they fly over Paris, the city that Arthur will always think of as their home.

\---

Dom and Eames’ reunion goes better than anticipated.

Eames punches Dom cleanly, right in the center of his face, knocking him back and what probably would have been off his feet if Arthur hadn’t been there to catch him.

After this greeting, however, Eames appears satisfied, and when Dom starts to smile at Eames over his rapidly bleeding nose, Eames actually smiles back.

\---

Ariadne gets out of the warehouse as soon as she can after teaching each level to its requisite dreamer. Arthur admired her unflinching curiosity, but Dom has shared his secrets with as many people as he’s going to, and so Arthur is glad to see her go. Yusuf is there for the money, and for the chance to prove he’s the best in the world, but Ariadne was more tricky, motivated by her burgeoning talent and a thirst for every kind of knowledge she could get her hands on, making her look where she wasn’t supposed to, making them all see the things they were trying to avoid.

\---

Eames tolerates Dom’s hand on Arthur’s shoulder and even his lips against Arthur’s cheek as they say goodnight. He doesn’t say anything about the way Dom and Arthur orbit around each other now, as though they’re both afraid of what will happen if they ever get too far away from each other. Arthur knows this to be his own motivation, at any rate, although he can only guess at Dom’s.

Whatever Eames sees, it’s probably the truth. He’s always been the best at reading them, knowing what they need him to be. Even Dom. When Dom needed a rival, that’s what Eames was. When Dom needed to take Arthur away from him, Eames let him. And now that he needs Eames’ forgiveness, Arthur knows that Eames will find a way to give that to Dom as well.

\---

Dom makes Yusuf explain about the risks involved in using sedatives as strong as they’ll need to in order to go three layers deep, and Arthur admits he suspects Fischer’s had his subconscious militarized, although he can’t find a paper trail to prove it.

“Look at him - look at his father. No one gets to that position without some kind of training, not anymore,” Arthur states frankly, standing in the warehouse behind half-covered whiteboards.

Dom nods, looking, and hardly for the first time, like he thinks this plan needs to be abandoned.

Yusuf is looking similarly wary, but Eames claps his hands together, setting his features to something resembling steely optimism.

“We’re about to do something unlike the world has ever seen, and if we succeed, we’re going to change the world in more ways than one. This isn’t a job for people who simply tolerate the risks. It’s a job for people who _thrive_ on them.”

Arthur can’t help but wonder if that’s always been the difference between them, right there.

\---

“How are the children?” Eames finally asks, the day Maurice Fischer dies.

Dom and Arthur look at each other, and for a long time neither of them can decide who will answer.

“Missing Mal. Missing you,” Dom eventually answers.

Eames doesn’t look away, meeting Dom’s eyes steadily as he says, “Well, once we’re done with this inception lark we’ll just have to see if there isn’t something we can do about that second bit.”

For the first time since Mal died, Arthur feels something like hope sparking in his chest.

\---

Fischer _is_ militarized, but at least they’re expecting it.

As much as they can be, they’re also expecting the freight train that comes crashing into them the first level down. Arthur curses Dom’s fondness for metaphors, but he forgives Dom this failing as he has all Dom’s others.

They make it to the warehouse without major injury, and push through the first level largely due to the information Eames is able to get by impersonating Browning and the grenade launcher he dreams up to deal with Fischer’s besieging projections.

The second layer down, Arthur is in control, or at least it feels that way until he has to put them under, until he has to say goodbye.

He and Dom just smile at each other, their silence full of all the things they can’t say. Arthur wants to tell Dom to be careful, because they both know Mal will be down there waiting for him, but Arthur also knows there’s nothing he can say that will stop Dom from disappearing with Mal if he really wants to.

When he attaches the needle to Eames’ wrist, Eames warns him to be ready for the kick, eyes full of the worry he will never express, and Arthur kisses him once, just softly, before he tells Eames to go to sleep.

\---

They wake up on the shore of Yusuf’s dream, rain still battering down hard.

Arthur crawls onto to the beach beside Eames, who is crouched next to Fischer.

A few minutes later, Dom drags himself onto to shore, hauling Saito with him.

Arthur is amazed they all made it out intact, body and mind.

Eames tells him Dom shot Mal, down in the third level, saving Fischer and buying enough time to complete the job.

The bittersweet pride and affection in Eames’ voice as he relates this to Arthur is the most amazing thing of all.

\---

Saito makes good on his promise, and when they step off the plane in LAX, Miles and the children are there waiting for them.

Phillipa’s screech is the loudest noise Arthur has ever heard, or at least the highest pitch, and she all but climbs her way up into Eames’ outstretched arms.

James clings solemnly to his father’s leg, and Arthur is astonished to find himself presented with Miles’ outstretched hand.

Arthur shakes it uncertainly, and hopes his face doesn’t reveal his shock when Miles says, his head inclined towards Dom, “Thank you bringing him back to reality.”

Arthur can’t help but look over at Eames, and wonder if he’s really the one who should be taking the credit.

\---

They don’t say goodbye to Saito or Yusuf, but Arthur can’t help to assume he’ll see them both again soon. What the five of them have achieved together isn’t something easily forgotten, even if it doesn’t mean to Yusuf or even Saito quite what it does to the rest of them.

They have to take a minivan from the airport, which makes Eames laugh. Arthur is too overwhelmed by the sense of deja vu he gets from strapping James into his car seat to laugh with him, but he breathes easier when he settles into his own seat and Eames is still sitting in the passenger seat in front of Arthur, and James is still resting comfortably at side. Dom’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder, and when Arthur cranes his neck backwards, he’s reassured by the sight of Dom and Phillipa tucked into the seats behind him.

Miles doesn’t talk as he drives, and Arthur is grateful for the silence. He can’t imagine the things he would say if he opened his mouth in that moment, his heart so full of what they’ve somehow managed to regain and yet still breaking over what will always remain lost that he almost wonders if he’ll ever be able to speak again.

\---

They spend a few days with Mal’s family in Los Angeles, in the house they moved to after Mal died and they claimed they couldn’t stay in the home she grew up in, or even the continent.

Arthur hasn’t been back to the states in nearly ten years, since he first ran away to Europe with nothing more than a half-formed dream of the life of culture and intrigue he would lead when he got there and the youthful arrogance to believe he would be able to achieve all that and more. He feels no sense of attachment to the place, not even when they travel to New York so Arthur can visit his mother’s grave.

He’s glad when they decide to move back to England.

\---

Dom designs them a house with huge windows and vaulted ceilings. They build it on a plot of land that has evidently belonged to Eames’ family for generations, although he doesn’t explain exactly how. Arthur gives him the benefit of the doubt, deciding it doesn’t matter if the title Eames produces is real, just as long as it appears that way. It’s about time he learned that the only reality that matters is the one you choose to believe in.

The house looks out onto the ocean, perched on a cliff in the English seashore. In the mornings, all three of them take James and Phillipa down to the water to build sandcastles and swim on the rare days when the water is warm enough. At night, Eames tells them stories of his adventures, twisting them into fairy tales the children can laugh through and be delighted by.

When they sleep, Arthur lies on his back with Dom and Eames curled around him, close enough that he can wrap an arm around each of their shoulders. He never dreams, and neither do they.

None of them can, not anymore. Or maybe it’s just that they don’t need to.

_Two years later_

“We have no eggs,” Eames announces, peering into the fridge.

There’s a general outcry in the room, not only amongst the children. Arthur was really hoping for pancakes.

“What about vegetable oil and baking powder? Maybe we can make a vegan recipe,” he suggests, even though the appalled look Eames responds with is entirely expected.

“Why don’t we just take a drive, we can get breakfast in town and pick up some groceries while we’re there.”

Dom’s alternative is met with a cheer from James, who loves to ride in the car, and a pleased smile from Phillipa, who is almost old enough to yearn for the chance to leave the family house and go into the shops the nearest town provides.

“Alright, I’ll get the keys,” Eames agrees, placing an idle kiss against the side of Dom’s head as he passes him on his way out of the kitchen.

Arthur smiles at this, as he always does at the signs of the trust and love Dom and Eames are slowly rebuilding with each other. When Arthur looks at Dom now, he is no longer afraid that Dom is someday going to go to sleep and refuse to wake. And when he looks at Eames, he’s no longer afraid to look away, back to Dom, or at their children, because he knows Eames will still be there when he looks back.

“Come on,” Dom says, hustling Arthur and the children out of the room, interrupting Arthur’s moment.

When he checks behind him, Arthur can see Dom’s smiling too, and likely has been ever since Eames kissed him. It’s nothing like the smile he used to have for Mal, but it’s not haunted either, like all Dom’s smiles used to be.

They get into the car, Eames driving, Arthur beside him in the passenger side, the children and Dom riding in the back. Arthur presses his knee against Eames’, and reaches behind the seat so he can hold onto Dom’s hand.

They drive with all the windows open, and when Eames starts to sing, something he used to only do with Mal, they all sing along.


End file.
